Bibliocook - All About Food

Award-winning blog of Irish food writer and broadcaster Caroline Hennessy.

Category: Travel

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Do / Return to Ireland / Travel

An Irish weekend away: Terryglass, Co Tipperary

Our Limekiln cottage at Tir na Fiuise After making Nic‘s Buttermilk Pancakes twice in the last ten days, I just have to sing their praises here. They take minutes to put together, don’t involve getting out the weighing scales (just use the cup measurements), are easy to cook, and – if you’re on a weekend away – the dry ingredients sit happily together in a zip-locked baggie until you choose to combine them with the buttermilk, butter and egg. Most importantly, they turn out delectable, light, fluffy, American-style thick pancakes without having to resort to a mix. We ate them this morning with oodles of fragrant organic maple syrup from Nenagh’s wonderful Country Choice deli, grilled rashers of bacon and, in my case, a little extra butter to further lubricate the sweet/savoury combination taste combination.

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Do / Return to Ireland

Murphy’s Ice Cream and a new Irish blogger

Murphy's Ice Cream Listening to Winter Food the other day I heard an interview with Sean and Kieran Murphy of Murphy’s Ice Cream in Dingle. They take presenter Clodagh McKenna through the making of their fabulous ice cream, telling her about local milk, flavourings and types of ice cream (Mango and Chilli – is that exported outside the Kingdom?!), taking her into a freezer room piled high with their produce – brioscaí (Cookies and cream), caramal (Honeycomb), bó bhán (Irish cream liqueur), fanaile (French vanilla) – and treating her, much to Clodagh’s delight, to sú craobh or Raspberry Sorbet. And don’t forget their seacláid – “chocolate, always chocolate’, as Kieran says several time during the interview. No secrets where his heart lies, especially if you check out his blog at Ice Cream Ireland and his decadent recipe for Hot Chocolate.

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Do / Eating Out / Lovely Lunches / Travel

Une vacance surprise à Paris

A Parisian picnic - in our hotel room Last Friday, over a glass of wine and some nibbles at a city centre tapas bar, the Boyfriend – after WEEKS of mystery – handed me my passport and…a guidebook for Paris! He had told me that we were going away for the weekend, we would be spending time in a city and that I had to pack for cold weather. Despite lots of guessing – I thought Galway, or maybe Belfast – I hadn’t even come close to figuring out where we were going.

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Cookery Books / Read / Return to Ireland

Irish Food: Slow & Traditional by John and Sally McKenna & Irish Food: Fast & Modern by Paul Flynn and Sally McKenna ***

irishfood_slow_cook.jpgAlthough these wee cookbooks are small – just 64 pages – they are beautifully formed. The Irish Food books are from the same stable that produces the Bridgestone Top 100 guides to restaurants and places to stay, as well as the Irish Food Guide – Sally and John McKenna’s Estragon Press – they are well worth investing in, and at €3 apiece, they won’t break the bank.

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Eating Out / Return to Ireland

An afternoon stop: Avoca Handweavers, Kilmacanogue

Saturday night dinner for friends staying over meant a late night, a not-so-hurried rise on Sunday morning and a similarly delayed breakfast. We badly needed to blow the cobwebs away so we drove down to Brittas Bay for a long walk in the surprisingly warm sunshine (and a brief snooze on the beach!). When we arrived back in the car about 3pm, lunchless, the Boyfriend and I were hungry as hunters. Driving back to Dublin we took the opportunity to turn off the N11 into the branch of Avoca Handweavers in Kilmacanogue. Although initially rather daunted by the long line of lunch-ing and afternoon tea-ing visitors, we were distracted by a blackboard full of intriguing choices. By the time we had decided on dishes, we were almost at the top of the queue and gazing at the generously stocked salad display. More decisions had to be made.

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Cook / Return to Ireland

In New Zealand, pumpkins. In Ireland, squash. Roasted Butternut Squash with Chickpeas and Cumin

Roasted Butternut Squash with Chickpeas and Cumin - and lots of coriander! After mourning the lack of good pumpkin in Ireland, I’ve discovered an alternative option – squash! Now, there’s a terminology question here. What is the difference between squash and pumpkins? I think it was Stephanie Alexander’s Cook’s Companion that made the point that all squash in Australia (and New Zealand) are called pumpkins. My own understanding of the difference between the two is that a pumpkin is a rounded vegetable, like that used by Cinderella to get to the prince’s ball, while a squash can often be a different shape. That’s no hard and fast rule, however!

More Nationwide foodie items 0

Do / Return to Ireland

More Nationwide foodie items

Nationwide is a thrice-weekly Irish television show which consists of a collection of pieces on life in the country. Covering art, music, photography and – to my delight – food, it’s the kind of programme much loved by grannys and parents who believe that RTÉ is altogether too Dublin-centric. Although I don’t have a television, I keep an eye on the foodie side of things through the Nationwide website as they’ve been particularly good at highlighting artisan producers. I’ve mentioned it before in relation to the Fergusons of Gubbeen and last Friday’s show also had a couple of pieces worth checking out.